"There is only one power that determines the course of history . . . the power of ideas." — Ayn Rand

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Government, Not Industry, is the Predator in Health Insurance

The New Jersey Star-Ledger followed up NJ Representative Tom MacArthur’s ruckus town hall meeting by ridiculing MacArthur for comparing the fears about the GOP taking away the guarantee of pre-existing condition coverage with the earlier fears about “Death Panels” under ObamaCare.

"I think it speaks to the people's fear, but it reminds me a bit, people were saying President Obama wanted to set up death panels, wanted old people to die," he said. "You look back now and you realize how insane people got with their fear and their anger."

The maestro of the Obamacare repeal now says that he was referring to common "scare-tactics" used to "drum up fear," but nothing is more alarming than miscuing the national reaction to the resurrection of this fetid corpse known as the American Health Care Act.

MacArthur doesn't seem to remember: Sarah Palin and her acolytes used "death panel" to spread a lie - refuted in every advanced culture - that government involvement in health care means rationing and death.

The fear he witnessed Wednesday night is based on the fact that federal involvement in health care is a necessity, because it ensures that nobody is left out or exploited by a predatory industry - just the opposite of a death panel, you might say. [emphasis added]

It’s that last paragraph that got my attention. So, I left these comments:

This is exactly backward. It is the government that has a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. Only the government, through its unique law-making powers, can force you to comply with its edicts under threat of throwing you in a cage. It is only the government that, through its power to take your money at gunpoint—its taxing powers—can force us into an employer-based system of health insurance, so if you lose your job you lose your insurance—thus getting a lot of people stuck with a “pre-existing condition” through no fault of their own. It is only the government that can force up our insurance premiums through “essential benefit” mandates that we otherwise wouldn’t buy. It is the government that forcibly bans insurance companies from competing, to the detriment of consumers. It is the government that forcibly forbids health insurance companies from performing the essential task at the heart of the purpose of insurance—to fairly price policies according to an objective assessment of risk. Only a government can force you to buy health insurance only government central planners approve of. Only a government can forcibly take money from some people to subsidize others it deems “left out.”

Industry cannot do any of that. It cannot force anyone to buy its product. A private company can only make offers. Consumers are free to accept the offer, attempt to negotiate better terms, or reject it and go to a competitor (if the market is free from government interference). Consumers are free to say to a private company what they are not free to say to the government—“NO.”

The fact is, the current health insurance industry is not a real insurance industry. The government has gone way beyond its only morally proper function of using its legal monopoly on the use of force to protect individual rights through, for example, policing the insurance markets against fraud, breach of contract, and the like. After decades of increasing government controls, all imposed at the point of a gun, seemingly “private” health “insurance” has essentially become an arm of socialistic government coercion and forced redistribution. Through myriad interventions engineered by politicians who never concern themselves with unintended consequences or the rights of their constituents to make their own choices based on the own judgement according to their own personal circumstances and interests, the government has caused all of the problems we now demand government fix. American health insurance is a victim of predation, all right—a predatory government.

Federal involvement in health care is not only not a necessity—it is destructive of real health insurance that people can actually use to fulfil their personal moral responsibility of paying and managing their own way on healthcare. The problems of government interference in healthcare go beyond private health insurance. But on the ACA vs.AHCA debate, my view is that we must step back and acknowledge that government control of health insurance has had its chance and it has failed. It’s time to return power to the people—the power of freedom and individual rights that only free market reforms can achieve. Unfortunately, the GOP’s AHCA tinkers, but it really is only a form of ObamaCare without Obama.

About Me

Greetings and welcome to my blog. My name is Michael A. (Mike) LaFerrara. I sometimes use the pen or "screen" name "Mike Zemack" or "Zemack" in online activism, such as posted comments on articles. “Zemack” stands for the first letters of the names of my six grandchildren (I now have seven, so I've also used "Zemack+1"). I was born in 1949 in New Jersey, U.S.A., where I retired from a career in the plumbing, building controls, and construction industries, and still reside with my wife of 44 years. The purpose of my blog is the discussion of a wide range of topics relating to human events from the perspective of Objectivism, the philosophy of reason, rational self-interest, and capitalism originated by Ayn Rand.

As Rand observed: “The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher.” I am certainly not the philosopher. But neither am I a field agent, or general. I am a foot soldier in that Objectivist army that fights for an individualist society in which every person can live in dignified sovereignty, by his own reasoned judgment, for his own sake, in that state of peaceful coexistence with his fellow man that only capitalist political and economic freedom can provide. While I am a fully committed Objectivist, my opinions are based on my own understanding of Objectivism, and should not be taken as definitive “Objectivist positions.” For the full story of my journey toward Objectivism, see my Introduction.

One final introductory note: I strongly recommend Philosophy, Who Needs it, which highlights the inescapable importance of philosophy in every individual's life. I can be reached at mal.atlas@comcast.net. Thanks, Mike LaFerrara.

Recommended Essays/Videos

Quotes I Like

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.—Francisco d'Anconia

I love getting older...I get to grow up and learn things. Madalyn, 5 years old, Montesorri student, and my grand-daughter

The best thing one can do for the poor is to not become one of them. Author Unknown

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Ronald Reagan

Thinking is hard work. If it weren't, more people would do it. Henry Ford

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. Ayn Rand